US REBILDNEWS SUMMER 2017 US REBILDNEWS SUMMER 2017 | Page 8

A HOUSE
WITH HISTORY & POSSIBILITIES
The Western House on the Rebild property in
Denmark has just been renovated and is ready to
receive larger parties. The emigration story will get
a central role in the beautiful building, inspired by a
true American saloon.
By Jesper Bradsted & Lars Bisgaard
Erik Eriksen got a crazy idea. Together with his wife Vivian he
has since 2002 rented his great-grandmother’s iconic house
in the Rebild Hills: The Top House, or Top Karen’s House as it is
also called. Often he has had to reject guests and tourists, being
on the lookout for a place with room for larger arrangements,
simply because there was not enough room in the cozy, but
also small, yellow house with the thatched roof. Then he got his
crazy idea: Why not utilize the Western House just next to
Top Karen’s House?
During the past years, that house has almost only been used
for storing things. At the same time, it had started looking a
bit shabby, and the words were that maybe it should be torn
down. “So I presented my thoughts to the Rebild Society, who at
once saw the idea of changing the Western House to a banquet
room,” says Erik Eriksen.
Important to tell the emigration story
During the past 4 months, artisans, including Erik and Vivian,
have therefore worked at extreme pressure to renovate the
Western House, so it is now ready to open the doors to the big
room, which is the heart of the house, and which by the way has
been arranged as a true American saloon with a roofed
verandah.
On the walls in the beautiful and rustic wooden house, you also
get some of the impressions that Danish emigrants must have
absorbed when arriving at the big country. For example, there is
a photo of the Statue of Liberty hanging in the Western House,
plus a photo of Sitting Bull and photos of prairie wagons rolling
over the dusty soil. And indeed there is a picture on the end wall
of the Cimbrians, who according to tradition emigrated from
Himmerland in year 120 B.C.
“It has been important to us to
make a place in line with the
history of the whole area. We
have thought of emigration in
all details, because it is also
important to maintain the
many stories and develop the
culture of the whole area.”
According to Erik Eriksen, there is a very funny story behind
the upgraded painting. The original is a somewhat bigger
painting by the artist Henrik Prip from 1935. It was made as a
wall painting in the previous Skorping Inn. Its special form at
the top is due to the fact that it was placed in the house end of
the pavilion wing of the inn.
“When the inn burned down some time in the 1990’s, the
painting was inexplicably only a little damaged by soot, and
as an architect of the municipal project ‘Kulturstationen’ (the
culture station), which replaced the almost burned down inn, I
fought very hard to preserve the painting, instead of just
The upgraded painting on the
wall inside the Western House.
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